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USS Midway set for new life as naval museum
Tuesday, January 6, 2004 Posted: 10:18 AM EST (1518 GMT)

SAN DIEGO, California (AP) -- The aircraft carrier USS Midway arrived Monday in San Diego Bay, where it will soon have a permanent home along Navy Pier as the nation's biggest museum devoted to carriers and naval aviation.

Tugs pulled the 74,000-ton decommissioned warship down the Pacific coast from a naval graveyard off Washington state to begin its new life. After taking on restored vintage aircraft at the Navy base in Coronado, the Midway will cross the bay to the city's waterfront next weekend to become the San Diego Aircraft Carrier Museum. A spring opening is planned.

The Midway will be the nation's fifth and largest aircraft carrier museum. The others are the Intrepid in New York; the Yorktown in Mount Pleasant, South Carolina; the Lexington in Corpus Christi, Texas; and the Hornet in Alameda, California.

Museum backers raised $8 million and spent more than a decade clearing regulatory hurdles to get the Midway out of mothballs.

"Someday, we'd like to be talked about in the same breath as Sea World and the zoo," said Scott McGaugh, a museum spokesman. "It's remarkable to think San Diego has almost a 100-year history with the Navy and yet has no naval aviation museum."

The Midway was the world's largest warship when it was launched in March 1945.
The Midway was the world's largest warship when it was launched in March 1945, less than six months before the Japanese surrender in World War II. The ship got its name from the Battle of Midway, the turning point of the Pacific war in which U.S. forces defeated a Japanese fleet in 1942 near the mid-Pacific atoll.

The Midway served three combat tours in Vietnam and launched warplanes over Iraq in 1991. The ship saw many firsts, including the first jet takeoff from a carrier and the dawn of naval missile warfare when a captured German V-2 rocket was launched from its deck.

The Midway was decommissioned in 1992 as the longest-serving carrier in U.S. Navy history. About 200,000 sailors and airmen called the Midway home over the years.

Definatly interesting to see them save that boat :D:D

Amazing the changes in the deck.

Jon

F-4 Phantom's and A-7 Corsair's Awesome.

Thanks for the pics N.

Sweet pics. Jon, thanks for pointing out those changes. I didn't even notice them.

Shane

Quote:

Originally posted by Audiofn
Amazing the changes in the deck.

Jon

You're right! Talk about a major refit!

That's great news!..I love old warships becoming museums....what a waste to scrap something with so much history...

I took my daughter to watch the USS New Jersey arrive in Jersey along with my father in law, a former Tin Can Sailor....great day!!

We all visited the "Black Dragon" last year...awesome vessel!

:cool:

There were people lined up around the Harbor to watch it come in. I can't wait to go down and check it out when it opens to the public.:cool:

My Grandfather's brother was on a PT Boat that took part in the sinking of the USS Wasp 18 during WWII

Quote:

Originally posted by CAP071
My Grandfather's brother was on a PT Boat that took part in the sinking of the USS Wasp 18 during WWII

Ummmmmm....huh? The PT boats and the USS Wasp are supposed to be on the same team!!!!

The Wasp was messed up real bad by the Japs. so they scuttled her. It didn't take much for a wooden flight deck carrier to go up fast once you mixed in the fuel and ammo.

USS Wasp, a 14,700 ton aircraft carrier, was built at Quincy, Massachusetts. She was commissioned in April 1940 and spent the next two years in the Atlantic area, taking part in exercises, Neutrality enforcement, "short of war" operations and early World War II tasks. In April and May 1942, Wasp assisted the British Home Fleet in the North Atlantic and twice entered the Mediterranean Sea to deliver Royal Air Force aircraft to Malta.

Wasp was dispatched to the Pacific in June 1942 to reinforce U.S. Naval forces there in the wake of the carrier battles of Coral Sea and Midway and in preparation for offensive operations in the Southern Pacific. In early August, she participated in the invasion of Guadalcanal. The remainder of her service life was devoted to the effort to hold that vital island in the face of Japanese attempts to recapture it. On 15 September 1942, while steaming well to the southward of Guadalcanal, USS Wasp was torpedoed by the Japanese submarine I-19. Uncontrollable gasoline fires forced her abandonment, and she was sunk by torpedoes from an escorting destroyer.

http://www.history.navy.mil/photos/i...001/k00447.jpg

http://www.history.navy.mil/photos/i...000/g16331.jpg

My POP was on CVS -18 Wasp

His ship picked up several Gemini Astronauts, I have a few autographs put away. I should break them out ands see who they are. He gave them to me 10 years ago .

Japanese submarine I-15, which was lurking nearby, witnessed the sinking of the WASP, and reported this to enemy headquarters at Truk, in the Caroline Islands. Reporting separately, Japanese submarine I-19 claimed to have fired the torpedoes that struck the WASP.

What captures the attention of researchers is that although the skipper of the Japanese submarine I-19 claimed torpedoing the carrier WASP, there is no record of any Japanese submarine commander ever claiming to have fired torpedoes which hit the other two ships!

I find it weird that the next commisioned "Wasp" carrier has only 13 months after the CV-7 sunk!

Here is the CV-18 (CVS-18)

http://www.history.navy.mil/photos/i...00/u057640.jpg

http://www.history.navy.mil/photos/i...00/g294131.jpg

http://www.history.navy.mil/photos/i...000/h97511.jpg

Gemini IV Space Flight, June 1965

The Gemini IV space capsule is lifted aboard USS Wasp (CVS-18) on 7 June 1965, after completing a 62 revolution flight around the Earth in 97 hours and 56 minutes. The spacecraft, crewed by Astronauts James A. McDivitt and Edward H. White, landed about 48 miles short of its target and some 400 miles east of Cape Kennedy, Florida, at 12:12 PM Eastern Standard Time on 7 June. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration Gemini IV mission covered over 1,600,000 miles in the longest multimanned space flight yet flown.

I have in my hand right now limited edition Zipoo lighter's from the recovery of Astronauts Ed White and James McDivitt June 7th 1965. That wasp CVS 18 was also in the Cuban Crisis.

I just got off the phone with my Pop He said he can remember hanging out on the fan tail smoking a cig with the one guy.

That ship was sold to be made into razor baldes and toyota's some years later:(

USS Wasp, a 27,100-ton Essex class aircraft carrier built at Quincy, Massachusetts, was commissioned on 24 November 1943. She arrived in the Pacific in March 1944 and conducted her first combat operations in May. During June-August, Wasp participated in the Marianas Campaign, including the Battle of the Philippine Sea, and in strikes elsewhere in the central Pacific. These were followed by support for the September assault on the Palaus, and, in October, by attacks on Okinawa, Formosa and the Philippines, and in the Battle of Leyte Gulf.

For the rest of 1944 and into January 1945, Wasp sent her planes against the Japanese in the Philippines, the South China Sea area and as far north as the Ryukyus. In February and March, she supported the Iwo Jima invasion and took part in raids on the Japanese Home Islands. While off Japan on 19 March 1945, Wasp received a bomb hit that caused heavy casualties among her crew, though she remained in action for several more days before steaming to the U.S. for repairs.

Wasp arrived back in the western Pacific in July 1945, in time to participate in the War's final air attacks on Japan. After the enemy capitulated in mid-August, she supported occupation efforts, despite suffering serious typhoon damage to her forward flight deck on 25 August. The carrier returned to the U.S. in October, then transported service personnel home before decommissioning in February 1947.

In mid-1948, Wasp began modernization to permit safer operation of heavier modern aircraft. After recommissioning in September 1951, she joined the Atlantic Fleet. On 26 April 1952, while en route to Gibraltar, Wasp collided with and sank the destroyer minesweeper Hobson, necessitating a return to the U.S. for repairs to her mangled bow. In mid-year, she deployed to the Mediterranean and Northern Europe. The ship was redesignated CVA-18 in October. Transferred to the Pacific in September 1953, Wasp deployed twice to Asian waters in 1953-55, received an angled flight deck and "hurricane" bow modernization, then made another western Pacific cruise in 1956.

In November 1956, Wasp became an anti-submarine warfare support aircraft carrier, with hull number CVS-18, and moved back to the Atlantic in early 1957. For more than a decade and a half, she kept busy on ASW, training and other operations in the Caribbean and Atlantic, visiting Northern Europe and the Mediterranean frequently. During 1965-66, Wasp also served as recovery ship for five manned space flights. The veteran carrier participated in her final exercises in the fall of 1971, then began preparations for inactivation. USS Wasp decommissioned in July 1972 and was sold for scrapping the following May.

I gotta find them damn autographs now. It's killing me I forget where I put them damn it

MY older brother was a Nut job for naval aviation. He met and spoke with Gregory "Pappy" Boyington. He even signed a painting of him for my brother and we have a picture of him actually signing it. Cool

My dad has four years on the Essex class carrier USS Boxer in Korea, Go Navy!:) Thanks to all of them, then and now. NK